@mariecocco: "America Out of Work
By Marie Cocco, Washington Post Writers Group. Posted November 27,
2008.
Unemployment is soaring and it may be March before we feel the first
dollar of an Obama recovery plan.
WASHINGTON  There will be no freedom from want. The only thing we
might now hope for is freedom from fear. Even that is a distant state
of mind.
It is not just the wild fluctuations in the stock market, the
water-cooler jokes about retirement accounts that are now 201(k)s. It
is the incomprehensible dithering of our current president through his
lame-duck period, his bizarre refusal to give approval to any economic
package that aided anyone or anything that is not a big bank or a Wall
Street financial institution.
This delay may well be the scariest development of these frightening
times.
What are the reasons for President George W. Bush to have blocked the
post-election congressional effort to make a down payment on an
anti-recession program aimed at job-creation and sending money to the
squeezed states, which must balance their budgets while struggling
with ever-rising demand for basic services such as Medicaid and what
remains of the program we used to call welfare? Bush has argued, at
various times in the past few weeks, either that such a package isn't
really necessary or that it might be possible if it were tied to a
long-term trade deal with Colombia. The reasoning tortures the mind.
Besides inheriting an economic crisis of historic proportions,
President-elect Barack Obama must make up for the squandered time. But
at the earliest, it is likely to be at least February or March before
the first dollar of an Obama recovery plan is felt.
This is a national disgrace.
Consider, for example, that one of the leading indicators of poverty
 a rise in the number of people eligible for food stamps  climbed
10 percent between August 2007 and August 2008. According to the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which studies the impact of
federal policy on the poor and working class, one in five children
already receives food stamps, a rate that is comparable to the
recessions of the early 1980s and the 1990s. Advocates for the poor
are expecting that a record number of Americans will be receiving food
stamps once new numbers are tallied over the coming weeks.
And we aren't deep into this recession yet. Economists believe that
unemployment will climb to 8 percent or even 9 percent next year.
As it happens, right around the time we became politically enamored of
de-regulating whole industries  and so prepared the ground for the
current economic morass  we also became politically obsessed with
shrinking the social safety net. It was too generous, the thinking
went, and had to be made less so to encourage work and discourage
dependency.
We are entering a recession the likes of which we haven't seen in
about three decades or perhaps longer. Since the last time the economy
fared so poorly, changes in the unemployment compensation system,
coupled with a transformation of the labor force to include vastly
more part-time and low-wage workers, have left a majority of workers
unprotected by this basic benefit. "Unemployment benefits cover a
smaller set of workers than they did in the late 1970s and early
1980s," says Sharon Parrott, director of welfare reform and income
support research at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Fewer
than 40 percent of unemployed workers now are eligible for benefits.
And we haven't yet tested  not on this scale anyway  what really
happens to the welfare-to-work system when there is no work.
Welfare revision was a signature cause of the 1990s, a centerpiece of
President Bill Clinton's drive to remake the Democratic Party's image
and a relentless demand of congressional Republicans determined to dry
up what they considered wasteful social spending. Basic cash
assistance to the poorest families has shrunk substantially since the
1970s and 1980s. In most states, adults who have no children and are
not disabled are ineligible for any aid. Single mothers who may have
lost their jobs now have time limits on the number of months they can
receive public assistance. To cope, Parrott says, "they'll double up,
they'll live with friends, they'll move from house to house, which is
very bad for kids."
We have lavished hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on the
financial masterminds whose collective genius has brought us these
desperate times. Some of those taxes were paid by the now-unemployed
workers who don't qualify for benefits. Having socialized the
financial system, there is no excuse now for failing to repair the
social safety net.
Marie Cocco's e-mail address is mariecocco(at)washpost.com.
(c) 2008, Washington Post Writers Group"
    @where: "<quote>
You'll never feel a dollar from Obama's recovery plan. He snookered you 
mindless liberal assholes."
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